Smile Back ...

Olaf Breuning

Source : List

Manfred Unger meets Ellen Von Unwerth

SPY NUMBERS & SKATEBOARDERS

A video we would have loved to see at the SPY NUMBERS exhibition

The Spy Numbers exhibition at Palais De Tokyo had a very attractive and promising content with it's nebula of spy number stations, coded transcription formula and old war sci-fi gear photographies. Well, the result is a very mediocer exhibition with not even half ot the artworks you would expect to be presented and none of the photographs printed in the museum's magazine. Anyway, sun is on Paris these days and the outside of the monumental stalinian-like architectured Palais De Tokyo is after all a very pleasant place for a quiet drink. It also gives a view on the many skateboarders gathering every week end at the buiding feet, and Manfred Unger couldn't help documenting the rests of a once subculture youth movement now turned into a soda selling accessory. There are days like these in Paris, and it's mostly sundays.

Another video not seen at Palais De Tokyo

Photos by Manfred Unger

Manfred Unger's "Of The Day"

Thursday 2nd July 09
Flag, Paris

Special Feature : " A Cold Empty Silence" by Manfred Unger for SANG BLEU III / IV

PHOTO : Manfred Unger

SANG BLEU III / IV is available worldwide at good news stands and book shops,
for more info please check : http://sangbleu.com/order/

First and Last and Always....Die Angewandte - Vienna's University of Applied Arts

Here is the new poster for Die Angewandte, Vienna 's fashion university, shot by infamous contemporary artist turned photographer Erwin Wurm, art direction and styling by Manfred Unger with upcoming austrian model, 15 years old Nico.
The school has seen teachers like Helmut Lang, Raf Simons, Vivienne Westwood and more... for next season the rumors says Bernhard Wilhelm is taking over from Veronique Branquinho... to be confirmed and continued....

more info on www.dieangewandte.at

"Back in Black" - Lotta Volkova Womenswear

You probably already know her under the name of Lotta Skeletrix, her previous fashion menswear label mixing post punk and dark electronic influences, but this time Lotta Volkova is back with her eponymous label for womenswear.

Born in Vladivostok, the very east end of Russia, Lotta saw the downfall of the communist empire and the rise of a still exotic capitalism in the future ex-USSR, while going to school, skydiving, playing piano and learning English through metal music lyrics. Lotta recalls her first memory of fashion as a glimpse at Gaultier 90's TV show, Euro Trash on a pirate TV channel.
Aged 17, Volkova moves to London to study film and photography at Saint Martin's College ; becomes one of the main night scene characters and eventually starts her own menswear label in 2004 after being asked by Rei Kawakubo to produce some of the pieces she's been making for herself and her friends for Dover Street Market. Lotta Skeletrix then grows on an international scale, with shows in Paris and London, stockists all over Europe and Japan, and Lotta becomes, according to I-D magazine, " The uncrowned queen of the underground".
In 2006, Volkova decides to stop the Skeletrix line to concentrate on her art and photography works and moves to Saint Petersburg for a couple of months before settling down in Paris, where she starts photo styling for magazines such as Zoo, Dazed & Confused Japan, Tokion or Harper's Bazaar Russia with photographers like Ellen Von Unwerth, Mark Pillai or Marcus Mam.
At this point, the project of launching a womenswear label has been slowly growing into Volkova's mind, a dark and sexy collection, with this very personal touch that makes Lotta Volkova successful in anything she initiates. 2009, Lotta Volkova's eponymous womenswear label is launched, sold exclusively at charismatic Maria Luisa's Paris boutique, the collection is articulated around black or white cotton and wool shirts and dresses , here topped with leather or denim harnesses, there ruffled layers all over, or enhanced with studded collars or shoulders. All in the very peculiar aesthetic mixing music influences with hints of fetish, avoiding the clichés of those inspirations with Lotta 's usual ease.
Lotta Volkova likes to quote the 90's Garbage hit " I'm only happy when it rains" as a state of mind, but she for sure is happy in Paris, rainy or not.

Photo by Manfred Unger

www.lottavolkova.blogspot.com

"A sweet and Tender Hooligan" - Introducing Manfred UNGER -

Manfred Unger
From the series " Something is Coming"

Vienna based Manfred Unger has been working for the last 10 years in the fashion, design and art scenes with it's art installations, make up performance and fashion design consulting along his constant focus on photographic works.
Going from the art direction on a young designer's catwalk show to styling high rank politics for Austria's number one daily paper is pure routine for multi-tasker Unger. Creating his own circle of productive energy including numerous collaborators in more numerous disciplines, Unger thinks himself as an open creative person, with the need to create " there is no other possibility" he admits. His photographic work goes from fashion to art and back, with sometimes a hint of documentary, and with for only goal : the next step forward. His approach can be spontaneous but always very constructed with this almost non-sense feeling of controlling the unexpected.
Though he precises he "would never walk on a rope", Unger seems to have very few limits in his surrounding world : the conformed and bourgeois, cake-like architecture of the city of Vienna. Walking by a newsstand he would ask " Can I steel this?" pointing at some publication he doesn't intend to pay for, and the answer is always "off course !". A hooligan I said, but sweet and tender as Vienna's delight.

MANFRED UNGER
Special Portfolio

Manfred Unger
from the series "Kids"

Manfred Unger
From the series "Berlin"

Manfred Unger
From the series "Something is Coming"

Manfred Unger
From the series "Fips"

All pictures rights to Manfred Unger
http://manfredunger.com/